Time nigh to give up the ghost

Labor is in danger of repeating the damaging Hawke-Keating stand-off, says Geoff Kitney.

Bill Hayden's political ghost is stalking the leadership of Simon Crean and taunting him to do the honourable thing. The ghost last appeared 12 years ago, on the morning that Bob Hawke dogged it after Paul Keating told him he wanted his job and was going to take it. Keating had declared himself to Hawke in an electrically charged meeting in Hawke's office the previous evening.

Hawke called a special caucus meeting at 8am on May 31, 1991 to settle the issue, but when the moment came, Hawke declined to take the initiative, instead telling Keating it was up to him.

This meant that instead of Hawke declaring the leadership vacant and inviting the caucus to decide the winner in a secret ballot, he was demanding that Keating get his supporters to put their hands up for a motion seeking to declare the leadership vacant. Putting your hand up to vote against your leader requires a great deal more courage than a secret vote.

In the awkward silence that followed Hawke's refusal to bring on the challenge, a voice from the back of the room called out: "That's not what Bill Hayden did in '82."

The voice was Peter Walsh, the diehard Hayden loyalist who had become a heavy lifter in the Hawke cabinet and contributed prodigiously to the government's economic reform agenda. His reminder that Hayden had courageously taken head-on the first Hawke challenge by resigning his position and moving immediately to secret ballot struck a savage blow at Hawke's defence of his position.

Three days of chaos followed, after Keating refused to move for a show of hands, saying Hawke should follow the Hayden tradition, the meeting broke up in disarray and could not be reconvened until the following Monday. Hawke won the ballot, but not by enough to kill Keating's ambition.

Hawke's chief tactical adviser at that time was Kim Beazley. Beazley later admitted this had been an error, although he told Peter FitzSimons in an interview for his biography: "Bob's position was basically well-held: 'I am prime minister, it is up to them to put this on, not me, and if they want to do it they can get up and move it at the meeting."'

So now we have the wonderful irony of the Beazley challenge relying on Crean doing what Beazley advised Hawke not to do.

Crean yesterday gave a very clear indication that he had no intention of doing any such thing.

"As you know, the rules are there," he said. "If people believe that there needs to be a change, they know how to act in accordance with the rules."

Asked directly if he would call on the challenge, he said, echoing the political ghost of Hawke rather than Hayden: "No, why should I? I am confident of my support in the caucus, absolutely confident."

So this presents Labor with the awful possibility of a rerun of the disastrous Hawke-Keating stand-off: a challenge mounted but a resolution of it unattainable for lack of courage.

This week the Labor Party could no longer ignore the reality that a challenge is under way.

John Howard's announcement of his intention to stay on as leader and Peter Costello's surprising shock at the news, followed by his very public show of distress, took the headlines. But this is a story for the future, when and if Howard's leadership runs into trouble and Costello is in a position to do something about his ambition.

The most immediate impact of the Howard decision was what it meant for the ALP and the leadership contest already under way: it meant that Labor's deepest fears had materialised, that whoever leads Labor will be facing Howard at the next election.

Howard's decision meant that the coalition's huge advantage over Labor on leadership also stayed. It meant that the yawning gap between Howard's standing in the polls and Crean's - the gap into which Beazley has pushed his claim to be given a third chance to beat Howard - has been locked into the federal political equation. And that locks in Crean's vulnerability.

It locks in what has become Labor's greatest handicap since Crean took over the leadership after the last election - its Howard phobia. Under Crean, Labor has become almost paralysed by the idea that Howard is unbeatable.

As the Beazley challenge to Crean has gathered momentum it has done so not because all those who are backing it believe a change of leadership will put Labor in a position to win. The leadership battle is being seen as a choice about who is likely to be the best loser. That makes this a bleak contest. It makes it a contest which up to 40 per cent of the caucus would rather not have because the choices are so uninspiring.

On present indications, if Crean chooses not to declare a spill of the leadership and bring on a leadership ballot, it's highly likely that the combination of fear and lack of enthusiasm would not see a show of hands sufficient to force a spill. But that would be a dismal stalemate.

Unless there was a miracle that saw Crean recover from his near-terminal lack of credibility with voters, Labor's support for him would remain brittle and its fear of Howard crippling. To have any hope of recovery, Crean needs a decisive vote from his colleagues in his favour. Without it he won't kill off Beazley.

That would leave Labor facing the prospect of muddling on with a critically wounded leader and a battle-scarred challenger sparring but having no way of settling the issue.

The irony of this week's events is that the notion of Howard's invincibility has been shaken by the Costello blow-up. The emergence of strain in the Liberal leadership means that it could become brittle if it could be put under pressure.

Squibbing a showdown and leaving the leadership issue festering will give Labor little hope of breaking out if its defeatist mindset. As the incumbent, Crean has a responsibility to do the honourable thing and give Labor the chance to move on. In following Hayden's precedent, Crean risks suffering Hayden's ultimate fate - a first-round victory too narrow to secure his leadership from further challenge.

But it is better to show courage and risk defeat than to defer in the hope that you will deter. Just ask Bob Hawke.